Cervical Cancer Blog Eleven aka The Three Month Check-Up

In my last blog post (written about ten million years ago when dinosaurs walked the earth) I referred to the fact that I was messing up the time-space continuum by doing my posts out of sync with the timeline.

In keeping with that I am Quantum Leaping all over the place and messing it all up again. If you don’t have the faintest clue what I am referring to then you should be ashamed of yourselves because you are missing out. Here. Go here.

I promise I will get around to the two posts that I need to write in order for things to make more sense. When they arrive, they will be entitled ‘The Little Op’ and ‘The Big Op.’ The Psychology student in me is wondering if I am subconsciously delaying writing these. The Realist in me knows I’m just being a lazy arse.

I would like to inform those of you who are still reading that I have recently had my three-month remission check-up. It went well but I am still waiting for my results. It’s only been a week but frankly in the world of cancer, no news or ‘slightly later to come news’ is often good news. I am quietly positive and hopeful and strangely feeling very zen. Though that may also be because its summer, its hot and I’m taking a lot of naps. God, I love naps. Like really love naps.

I had a little scribble on my appointment letter from my consultant’s secretary saying that he wanted to perform a Colposcopy. Oh. Yay. And that oh yay is filled with sarcasm from the very bottom of my little sarcastic heart. My previous experience with that particular procedure hasn’t left me with the fondest memories. I sometimes wonder what El Diablo Consultant is doing now. Probably shoving the world’s largest speculum’s up unsuspecting and innocent foofs.

In short it went a little something like this: –

1. Arrive early
2. Consultant runs late because this is an NHS hospital service and you should just factor in some chilling time
3. Pee about three times in half an hour (the time they were delayed by) because nothing is more nerve racking than a hospital appointment. Nothing is more nerve racking than a cancer remission appointment and nothing is more nerve racking than thinking you’re going to need to pee when someone is face to crotch with, well, your crotch
4. Get called in
5. Get told the Colposcopy suite is flooded so they can’t perform it
6. Do this little dance in your head: –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6ta5Y3xAhk

1. Get told they will need to perform a ‘vault smear’ instead
2. Have this play in your head: –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzMSfaNXYZg&t=6s

Medical Interlude

To reassure anyone who may have to have one of these – it’s not that bad. It’s basically a smear test that follows all the same procedures except for one difference. As there is no longer a cervix they need to take cells from another area.

The place they take the cells from is the top of the vagina – it’s not as accurate as cervical screening but how can you take cells from something that no longer exists? The answer is you can’t so they take it from the nearest place.

As the dictionary definition for vault is essentially ‘an underground large room or chamber used for storage’ this name makes you arch an eyebrow at the wonderful things they will call gynaecological procedures.

Instead of asking my fellow cervical cancer peeps ‘hey, how’s your fanny?’ I’m going to start asking ‘hey, how’s your underground chamber? Particularly cavernous today? I have decided to start storing nuts in mine for the winter.’ (Hehehe, in your end-o).

*Highly Medical Interlude over*

1. Go into a little medical room and manage the swiftest ‘bottoms off’ scenario known to man. You have got this now. You are no amateur
2. Have the Chamber of Secrets smear performed. No members of Slytherin appear. This is a good thing
3. Make small talk with the nurse and consultant about farting. This is your consultant who you have now seen a trillion times and he has seen your fanny a trillion times and has even had his fingers up your bottom so you are no longer even remotely bothered about anything ever again
4. They congratulate you on how marvellous your fanny is (ok this didn’t happen – but it should have) – however my consultant did say and I quote ‘I do love you Gerry’ apparently as I am ‘good fun!’ If there is an award for Best Patient then damn it I am campaigning hard.
5. They finish and exit the room to give you some dignity whilst you manage the swiftest ‘bottoms on’ scenario.
6. Exit little medical room and go chat with your consultant who tells you the results should arrive soon and that you’ll need an MRI scan in the next month so watch out for the letter
7. Heart goes ‘thumpity thumpity thump’ at the mention of the MRI because out of everything that is the one medical procedure that makes you truly nervous
8. Smile and accept that you’re going to be doped as fuck when the time comes
9. Exit the hospital pursued by a bear

It was extremely straight forward and simple and aside from the waiting it was over in less than 20 minutes. Until next time I guess.

There is one thing I want to include here as I am very open about my experiences and am now…

For the previous two months I had inexplicable pain and bleeding with one bout of bleeding lasting 14 days. In true Gerry fashion and because I clearly never, ever learn and I am so fucking stupid sometimes Darwin probably thinks I am trying to prove his point, I decided to wait until my remission appointment because ‘it could wait.’ One instance of the pain was so intense that a colleague had to give me a lift home because I was physically unable to walk the journey from the train station to my house.

“It’s probably just scar tissue or a wonky bit of pressure,” I told myself. Oh, like the problems you were having that were probably just polyps??? Huh?? Huh??

I told my consultant about it and whilst I genuinely like him and he is a fabulous consultant and person, he said the world’s most frustrating thing in the history of all frustrating things.

“It’s probably hormones.”

I wanted to cry. I really did. Because my worry was that it was hormones and that for every month for the rest of my pre-menopausal life I would be experiencing crippling pain and extended bouts of bleeding all because my body couldn’t fight off cells before they turned cancerous and I had to have a chunk of my reproductive system removed.

My plan became this: –

1. Be rational
2. Keep a record of everything
3. Get married
4. Beg for a hysterectomy in 2018/ 2019
5. Live happily ever after with my husband and our cat

Now word to the wise ladies. Sometimes it is hormones. Sometimes it is not. For me, even though my consultant who is an expert in gynaecological cancers immediately thought it was hormonal issues was indicative of a wider problem at large. In the medical professional world if you are a woman and you are experiencing concerns with your reproductive faculties they will pretty much think ‘it’s the hormones.’ This is why you hear so many horror stories of women being ignored because real medical issues are chalked up to ‘being female.’

Luckily the cause of the pain and bleeding was resolved during the Moria smear (no dwarves appeared either, this is also good). And guess what? Nothing to do with hormones. What could have been a concern was oddly reassuring to hear: –

“Ah,” my consultant says. “I can see some of my handiwork. A piece of surgical suture is making its way out.”

Then he asks the nurse to pass him the ‘posh forceps.’ Jazz it up mate all you like with the word ‘posh’, you still had to stick forceps up my birth canal and pull that sucker out.

That ‘sucker’ was a two-inch piece of surgical suture that, and again I quote my consultant, ‘my body had been giving birth too.’ Nice. But it does explain the pain and bleeding – a piece of medical wire was stabbing its way out of my uterus in whatever way it could.

Sure, it looked like this*: –

*actual size

But it felt like this: –

I told my partner that I had been such a big brave girl and then I got taken out for dinner.

I’ll see how I get on at the MRI and the six-month check-up. Let’s just hope my uterus purse string suture (oh yes, that is a thing) isn’t unravelling itself like an ancient tapestry and that I won’t have an embarrassing incident in Sainsburys’ one day when my uterus just ‘falls out.’

If that happens I will be blogging about it, more fool you all.

(https://atyourcervixuk.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/cervical-cancer-blog-eleven-aka-the-three-month-check-up/)